Markwayne Mullin, President Donald Trump’s pick for Department of Homeland Security secretary, said Wednesday that Congress needed to put partisanship aside and fund the department as he vowed to get down to work and keep it out of controversies that under Secretary Kristi Noem have kept it on the front pages of the news.
Mullin is appearing before senators on Wednesday for his confirmation hearing, where he faced questions over his vision for a department tasked with carrying out the Republican administration’s push for mass deportations, which has prompted a weekslong funding lapse for the department.
Mullin, an Oklahoma senator, has spent 13 years in Congress and has emerged as a close ally of the president’s. If confirmed, he would replace Noem, who was fired earlier this month amid mounting criticism of her leadership.
“I can have different opinions with everybody in this room, but as secretary of Homeland I’ll be protecting everybody,” Mullin told a packed room. “My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day.”
The hearing is Mullin’s first opportunity since being nominated to publicly present his plans for the third-largest department in the Cabinet. The sprawling department, with a workforce of roughly 260,000 employees, oversees a diverse mission set of responsibilities ranging from protecting the president from a bullet to helping states recover from disasters to deporting people in the country illegally.
